Gloryfades.org

This is an unusual day for me - instead of going elsewhere today the first thing I opened up in my browser was this page. I feel like updating this website, by gum! Well, it’s not like I haven’t been continually updating the website, actually. I’m almost a Nazi when it comes to my book list. Ever since I started that project I’ve been really conscious of the amount of books I read and the quality of the books I read. I think I have great taste in literature, much like I think I have great taste in music. However, everything is subjective when it comes to personal taste so others who look at my list and see nothing from say 19th century Industrialist England (well, there’s Dracula) would think I have a real shitty taste in books.

In any event, regardless of what you think of my tastes, I quite enjoy my little list. It’s certainly not definitive but it’s got most of what I’ve read in the past year or so. I wish it were longer but it wasn’t until recently that I paid off my library fines and began taking books out again. Beforehand, I was so sure that I had a $40 fine that I just continued to buy books. I rationalized the spending by explaining to anyone who questioned it that I was building my own library, thank you very much.

Onto more interesting topics, though. I had a lecture today in my African Diaspora class that I rather enjoyed despite the fact that we did not write any notes down. I wasn’t excited about going to the class because it’s the only one I have on Monday’s and the entire class takes a grand total of an hour whereas the commute is somewhere in the region of two to two and a half hours.

Despite my hesitance to go, I’m still glad I went cause I really like this professor. I’ve talked to other people in the class and they’re not thrilled by his lecturing style which is comprised of overheads (Oh God, the dreaded overheads!) and free-style lecturing. Tangents abound but I still enjoy it. Most often the tangents are still within the frame of the lecture anyway and every so often he gives us a glimpse into his past life.

I don’t often admit this but I’m intensely fascinated by Americans. Not just American bigheads, the ones we all know, but ordinary people in general. I like their accents and I like hearing their stories from their childhood in Missouri or California or Michigan or wherever because I’ve grown up with these ideas about Americans - everything’s larger than life, a melting pot of an American Dream where people are rude and ambitious and sometimes even downtrodden. It’s all a mishmash in my mind and when I get to meet actual Americans I just drink in whatever they have to say. Perhaps when I one day visit the US of A I’ll stop being so googly-eyed but until then, whatever. I like hearing stories from Newfoundland, too, so it’s not just one country. Heck, it doesn’t even matter where you’re from. If it’s not Hamilton, Ontario, I’ll totally listen to your life story, pal.

I wish I could sit down with him and listen to his lifestory cause every time he gives us a glimpse into it I want him to stop lecturing and tell me more.